Mexicans consider daunting prospect of deportee camps

By Mark Stevenson

Updated
2:06 pm PST, Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Mexico has indicated it would not accept the Trump administration’s new US immigration proposals, saying it would go to the United Nations to defend the rights of immigrants in the US. “I want to say clearly and emphatically that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Wednesday, according to Reuters. The Department of Homeland Security said its new directives focus on criminals and those who pose a threat to the U.S., but the provisions expand the authority of federal agents to deport the vast majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The new plans would also see the US deport immigrants to the country from which they arrived, regardless of their country of origin.

Media: MediaOS Video

MEXICO CITY — Mexicans fear deportee and refugee camps could be popping up along their northern border under the Trump administration’s plan to start deporting to Mexico all Latin Americans and others who entered the U.S. illegally through this country.

Previous U.S. policy called for only Mexican citizens to be sent to Mexico. Migrants known as “OTMs” — other than Mexicans — got flown back to their homelands.

Now, under a sweeping rewrite of enforcement policies announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, migrants might be dumped over the border into a violence-plagued land where they have no ties while their asylum claims or deportation proceedings are heard in the United States. U.S. officials didn’t say what Mexico would be expected to do with them.

The only consensus so far in Mexico about the new policies of President Trump is that the country isn’t remotely prepared.

Immigrants caught trying to cross the border from Mexico are detained in McAllen, Texas, in 2014.

Immigrants caught trying to cross the border from Mexico are detained in McAllen, Texas, in 2014.

Photo: TODD HEISLER, NYT

Photo: TODD HEISLER, NYT

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Immigrants caught trying to cross the border from Mexico are detained in McAllen, Texas, in 2014.

Immigrants caught trying to cross the border from Mexico are detained in McAllen, Texas, in 2014.

Photo: TODD HEISLER, NYT

Mexicans consider daunting prospect of deportee camps

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“Not in any way, shape or form,” said the Rev. Patrick Murphy, a priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in the border city of Tijuana, which currently houses about 55 Haitian immigrants. They were part of a wave of thousands who swarmed to the border in the closing months of the Obama administration in hopes of getting asylum in the U.S.

Tijuana was overwhelmed, and while the government did little, a string of private Christian groups pitched in to open shelters with improvised bedding, tents and sanitary facilities. Donated food kept the Haitians going.

Mexicans quake at the thought of handling hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a border region already struggling with drug gangs and violence.

“Just look at the case of the Haitians in Tijuana, what were they, seven or eight thousand? And the situation was just out of control,” said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. “Now imagine a situation 10 or 15 times that size. There aren’t enough resources to maintain them.”

It’s unclear whether the United States has the authority to force Mexico to accept third-country nationals. The Homeland Security memo calls for the department to provide an account of U.S. aid to Mexico, a possible signal that Trump plans to use that funding to get Mexico to accept the foreigners.